A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for suppressing fires. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and apparatus for effectively pumping water from a swimming pool onto structures or areas which have caught fire, or which are threatened with being ignited by an approaching fire.
B. Description of Background Art
The dedication and effectiveness of local fire fighting agencies and professional fire fighters has earned the respect and trust of U.S. residents. For that reason, most home owners seldom worry about how they would deal with a fire which has broken out on their property, or an approaching brush fire, for example. However, recent brush fires and forest fires in various parts of the country have diminished somewhat long-held confidence which homeowners have had in the ability of local fire fighters to respond quickly to fires which threaten a homeowner's property or life. This change of attitude has resulted in part from observations that rapidly spreading brush fires or forest fires can overwhelm resources of the most well-equipped and dedicated fire fighting services, to the extent of sometimes preventing fire fighters from even reaching threatened properties until long after they have burned to the ground.
For the foregoing reasons, many people are taking steps to prepare themselves to independently prevent or extinguish fires on their property when professional fire fighters are unavailable to do so. Unfortunately, such self-help measures frequently consist essentially of watering down a house or other structure using a garden hose connected to the homeowner's municipal water supply. Such methods are usually woefully inadequate, because available water pressure and flow rates available from a garden hose are simply not adequate to soak down a structure of any significant size, or to extinguish any but very small fires. Moreover, in the event of large scale emergencies, such as fires which have broken out over large areas, water pressure and hence available water flow rates from municipal water lines may diminish to a trickle.
In response to concerns about providing fire suppression capabilities which do not rely on professional fire fighting services, a number of types of systems have been proposed which utilize water held in a swimming pool basin or spa. One such system type uses a pump driven by a gasoline engine. The pump has an inlet port which is connected to a flexible hose that may be immersed into the water held in a swimming pool or spa, and has an outlet port connected to a nozzle through a length of fire hose.
Another type of fire fighting system for use in association with homes equipped with swimming pools is disclosed in Coleman, U.S. Pat. No. 5,366,021. That system includes a three-port, two position auxiliary valve which is inserted into the plumbing of the swimming pool water filtration and circulation system, between the outlet port of an existing swimming pool pump and pool filter. The auxiliary valve has an inlet port which is coupled by a pipe to the outlet port of the pump and a first outlet port coupled through another pipe to the pool filter. The system includes a PVC pipe connected at one end to a second outlet port of the three-port auxiliary valve, and at the other end to a fire hose which has a nozzle at the other end of the hose.
With the auxiliary valve in a first position, all of the water discharged from the pump outlet port is conveyed to the pool filter, so the pool water circulation and filtering system functions in a conventional manner. However, if water is needed for fire suppression purposes, the auxiliary valve is reconfigured by turning a valve handle to convey water discharged by the pool pump out through the second outlet port of the auxiliary valve, and hence through the outlet pipe, fire hose and nozzle.
The system disclosed in Coleman would seem to provide an effective means for pumping water from a swimming pool through a fire hose for fire suppression purposes. However, because of the design of the system disclosed in Coleman, and the design of most swimming pool water circulation systems, only a small percentage of the total volume of water contained in the basin of a conventional swimming pool may be pumped out at a high flow rate and used to suppress fires, for reasons which are explained below. Limitations of prior art fire suppression system utilizing water contained in a swimming pool were a motivating factor in the present inventor's invention of a fire suppression system for use with swimming pools.